Sometimes I think that there should be a rule about registering domain names if you’re not actually going to use them.
I don’t know how it would be enforced or what the criteria would even be, but it’s really, really frustrating to have four or five ideas for a new project, only to find that most of the prime domain names have already been scooped up and are currently parked with advertising and offers to resell for an inflated price.
I mean, I’d be fine if I pulled up the name and there was a site already made doing the same thing as my idea – sure, it’s a little disappointing because somebody beat me to the punch, but to find somebody who’s just sitting on the name because it’s catchy and can bring in a few bucks a month in keyword search advertising – that really bugs me because I feel like it’s a waste of space on the internet, so to speak.
Of course, the problem is there’d really be no way to actually prove intent – if you required a “website” within a certain amount of time after registering, you’d see template sites just like you see now with the “What you want, when you want it!” garbage that poses for parked domain sites nowadays anyways – there’s no real way to enforce making a decent website to justify owning a particular domain name. We’ve got enough of those cookie-cutter, syndicated content sites clogging up the tubes these days anyways – I have a feeling that trying to put the crunch down on parked domains would just exacerabate the problem ten-fold.
I guess the sad thing is, the only real way for a guy like me to combat this problem is to think ahead and do the exact same thing myself so that I can hold onto the names before someone else gets a chance to! Which sucks for this particular idea that I had because a) I don’t ever know if it’ll even come to fruition or be worth persuing a year down the road when I’d likely have time to start working on it, and b) it’s an idea that would fit into a larger scope, meaning that I’d likely want to register a handful of similar names all at once to ensure that they all fit into the same naming convention … which could get expensive at 6-12 names @ $9.95 each.
It’s either that or just wait it out and potentially consider settling for subpar names, but seeing as I’ve already done that a couple of times and ended up missing out on names that seemed innocent enough at the time but later got scooped up anyways, maybe it’s better to just squat now and then if things don’t work out, drop them in a year or two for someone else to immediately grab and put ads on themselves… 🙁